The New York Jewish Week: Connecting the World to Jewish News, Culture, Features, and Opinions for Wednesday, 7 January 2015
Dear Reader,
Will the move by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to have the International Criminal Court prosecute Israeli leaders as war criminals help re-elect Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu? Contributing Editor Nathan Jeffay makes the case in hisLetter From Israel.
ICC move is big boon to Bibi, just as left is back in game.
Nathan Jeffay
Contributing Editor
Far apart: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Getty Images
For Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, it’s certainly been a “season of goodwill.”
Just ahead of the New Year, he gave the ultimate gift to Israel’s prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu has been, like him, losing grip of his constituency. But nobody thought that Abbas would come racing to his aid.
Netanyahu has a campaign to wage, and for the first time since he came in to office since 2009, it looks like he has a real challenge on his hands from the left.
Peace was hardly on the election agenda last time around. (Remember the social protest movement?) But Labor, running with a small centrist party, has not only got people talking about it again, but has actually been leading in the polls, suggesting that the Netanyahu era could be over come the March 17 ballot.
But then came along Abbas, with his latest bout of strong-arm Oslo Accord-violating unilateral tactics. Last week he tried to use the UN Security Council to force Israel to comply with his statehood wishes, and when that failed, he chased after a dream of hauling Israelis up in the Hague amid multi-lingual cries of “war criminal.” In other words, he applied for Palestinian membership to the International Criminal Court with the hope of using it as a stick with which to beat Israel.
In an election that Netanyahu is choreographing as a battle of right versus left, nothing plays into his hands like this. Yes, people could see this as a symptom of Netanyahu’s failure to prevent it, but this isn’t how Israelis think. Instead, Abbas’ move cranks up the volume of the “no partner for peace” chorus.
How, Israelis ask, can the Palestinian Authority be considered a partner for peace when it seems uninterested in talks and instead wants to escalate the conflict in the international arena? Especially when this comes after a season of PA incitement based on conspiracy theories of Israeli plans to harm the al-Aqsa Mosque and insensitively positive gestures towards terrorists. This ICC move has Israelis who were trying to be optimistic shifting towards those who cry that there is “no partner.”
Sure enough, immediately after this, a poll suddenly put Likud in the lead, three seats ahead of Labor. With classic Israeli insularity, the website that commissioned the poll, Walla!, suggested the poll flip-flop was the result of Likud’s party primary (which Bibi won). But the impact of the aggressive unilateral Palestinian moves is a far more serious explanation.
Which way things will go from here is anyone’s guess, but the significance of Abbas’ gift to Netanyahu shouldn’t be underestimated. Whatever Netanyahu would actually do on the Palestinian issue if reelected, he’s choosing to play this election as right-versus-left. In this setting, the “no partner” ethos helps the right enormously — though for strategic reasons Likud can’t energetically promote it in campaigning. Now there’s no need. Abbas is promoting it.
Of course, Abbas’ motivation in all of this is not really to help Bibi. Rather, he wants to flex his muscles domestically. He wants to assert his relevance and stop his rivals in Hamas from stealing the show as the only ones to stand up against Israel. He is desperate and frustrated.
Yet his latest actions are badly thought through. Putting aside what is good for the region, it’s hard to see how they are good for him. Adopting the mindset of a Palestinian Machiavellian, for the two years since ICC membership became a possibility, Abbas has been holding a joker in his hand — a one-time bargaining chip to hold over Israel’s head and make a demand. Instead, he threw it away to grab newspaper headlines during the New Year silly season when publicity is cheap. And the domestic glory this earned him won’t do much for him — Palestinians will quickly become frustrated when it dawns on them that they are unlikely to see any significant anti-Israel action at the Hague for years. In the short-term, which is what matters for Abbas’ political career, it is likely to come to be viewed as a hollow victory.
The most absurd part of all of this is that Abbas has not just helped Netanyahu, but turned himself into the punching bag that Netanyahu can strike to maximize the political capital. Past experience shows that Netanyahu vents his anger against Abbas’ Palestinian Authority by announcing settlement building and/or hitting it in the pocket. Netanyahu, to his credit, resisted a chance to endear himself to the right by announcing a settlement plan, but he did decide to freeze around $130 million of tax money that Israel collects on the PA’s behalf, and which was due for transfer to Ramallah at the end of December.
This was ill advised. In halting routine cooperation when bilateral relations get bad, it sets an awful precedent to the Palestinians — after all, the last thing Israel wants is for Ramallah to deal with the next diplomatic spat by stopping the security coordination that saves Israeli lives. Also, a cash-strapped PA is a weakened PA — and Israel needs the PA to keep order in the West Bank. Nevertheless, the opportunity for Netanyahu to cast himself as a strong leader who won’t take this lying down and who will hit the PA where it hurts was too good an opportunity to miss during this election season. He is playing the hand that Abbas dealt him — and could well come out smiling.
If he does, one wonders whether the many international observers who can’t hide their desperation to see the back of him will exercise intellectual honesty. Israel is constantly held responsible, as a result of its policies and its actions on the ground, for weakening the Palestinian peace camp. Will they similarly point a finger at Abbas should the doves fail in the election and Netanyahu triumph, or is it only Israel that is accountable for the political choices of the other side? n
Nathan Jeffay’s column appears twice a month.
Though the Russian-speaking community is considered among the most unaffiliated among American Jews, a new survey indicates that a Jewish-identity program called RAJE (Russian American Jewish Experience) has produced striking results, as I report inmy column.
New study shows high Jewish identity among grads of RAJE program; in-marriage rate 94 percent.
Gary Rosenblatt
Editor and Publisher
Gary Rosenblatt
Young people of Russian background, coming from secular homes and with little or no formal Jewish education, are considered among the most unaffiliated and at-risk of American Jews in terms of Jewish identity. But a comprehensive new study of that cohort finds that a Brooklyn-based program founded in 2006 to address the problem has produced some striking results.
According to the report, made public here for the first time, graduates of the RAJE (Russian American Jewish Experience) fellowship program are far more likely than their peers to study and practice Judaism, give to Jewish charities, volunteer for a Jewish organization and marry a Jewish spouse.
The program offers free, two-week trips to Israel and Europe for 18-to-30-year-olds who have completed a semester of RAJE classes (250 hours in all) on a wide range of courses on Jewish history, culture and traditions.
Of the 35 percent of RAJE alumni who married after completing the program, “94 percent married a Jewish spouse, and of them, 52 percent report having met their spouse at the RAJE program,” according to the study conducted by the Research Institute for New Americans, led by Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish Community Affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
Those figures indicate an intermarriage rate of just 6 percent — compared to 17 percent among Russian Jews in New York generally and far below the 28 percent found among Birthright alumni overall. (The national intermarriage rate among American Jews is 58 percent, and 71 percent among the non-Orthodox, according to the Pew Research Center’s Study of Jewish Identity in 2013.)
Among the other dramatic statistics regarding the activities of the respondents: in the last year 78 percent have given to charity, and of that group, 82 percent donated to Jewish organizations; 73 percent participated in Jewish organizational activities; 74 percent attended Shabbat dinner; and 38 percent reported that they took part in “a meeting, demonstration or other action in support of Israel.”
The study was conducted among 300 respondents who were selected randomly from a group of 2,240 RAJE alumni who graduated from the program between 2006 and 2011.
Among the several RAJE alumni I spoke with there was a consistent pattern of involvement: They came from unaffiliated families, had minimal Jewish education but were attracted to RAJE through friends or social media and became interested in learning more about their Jewish heritage and history.
Leona Krasner, a 27-year-old attorney, “just showed up” one day at a RAJE class and liked that it “showed ways to apply Judaism to your life. I learned about the culture and got immersed in it.” She found the teachers, mostly Orthodox with Russian backgrounds, “very accepting,” and guest speakers helpful in talking about their own success and offering advice on “how to improve your life.”
She has become more involved religiously, and though “not Orthodox by any means” and feeling no pressure, she has embraced Shabbat and Jewish holidays. “I see those times now as an opportunity for friends and family to put aside their work and truly enjoy each other.”
Krasner said it is very important to her that she marry someone Jewish and is grateful to RAJE for “creating an excitement” about Jewish life and learning. She went on Birthright after completing the RAJE fellowship and is involved in several Jewish programs and organizations, including UJA-Federation of New York, where she is part of a program of Jews and Muslims who have come together to prepare food for the homeless.
Dmitry, who is 30 and owns an insurance and risk management company here, says RAJE has been “a spark” for his Jewish identity. Active in the program for the last seven years, he said he came back from a Birthright trip feeling “more connected, and I wanted to know more about who I am, what I am coming from and what I am a part of. Most Russian Jews don’t have that.”
He was interested in the classes RAJE offered, which include sessions on spirituality, holidays and customs. “But I probably would not have gone if not for my friends and the [offer of the] trip to Israel.”
Married to a RAJE fellowship classmate, Dmitry (he asked not to identified by his last name) was born in Kiev and came to the U.S. at the age of 6 with his parents. They identified Jewishly and with Israel, he said, but he had no religious training. “My generation is a unique breed,” he explained. “We are proud to be Jewish but know very little about it. It was beaten out of us [in the USSR], but it’s a positive connection, even if we lack the knowledge and background.”
When he first went to RAJE classes Dmitry said he’d heard that the teachers “try to make you more religious,” but he found the environment open, friendly and non-coercive. Over time he has increased his level of observance — “still not 100 percent but I have been keeping Shabbat gradually.” He was initially drawn in by the offer of the trip to Israel but “the more you learn, the more you understand, and my Jewish connection has widened,” he said.
Another graduate who met her spouse through RAJE, Lana Yutskaya, a 28-year-old social worker, said a Birthright trip in 2008 motivated her to learn more about Judaism, with a special interest in spirituality, having grown up with no formal Jewish education.
She says she didn’t see herself “as a religious person, but as I learned the meaning [of Jewish mitzvot and rituals], I became more interested.” She has grown in observance and now keeps a kosher home and lights Shabbat candles in addition to other rituals.
‘We Need To Do A Lot More For Them’
Each of the graduates I spoke with had high praise for Rabbi Mordechai Tokarsky, the soft-spoken founder and national director of RAJE, who is part of the Russian Jewish community. He said more than 10 percent of that community in New York between the ages of 18 and 30 has been reached by RAJE, despite the group’s financial struggles. (Its annual $2 million budget comes mostly from local Russian business people, the rabbi said.)
The point of the survey, the first of its kind, he said, was to learn about “concrete actions more than attitudes” among RAJE alumni regarding Jewish involvement. The four key goals the organization seeks to address are encouraging young people to establish Jewish households, have strong connections to Israel, affiliate with Jewish organizations, and express their spiritual needs through Judaism.
Rabbi Tokarsky is hopeful that the results of the RAJE survey, which he called “incredibly significant,” will motivate philanthropists and foundations committed to strengthening Jewish identity to support and expand the group’s efforts here and in other regions of the U.S.
He said that about 300,000 of the estimated 750,000 Russian-speaking Jews in the U.S. live in the New York area. Other cities with a sizeable Russian Jewish population in North America include Los Angeles and Boston as well as Chicago, Philadelphia and Toronto, where RAJE has begun operating pilot programs.
Jerry Levin, a businessman and the immediate past president of UJA-Federation of New York, has been a guest speaker at RAJE events for a number of years and is highly impressed with the participants and the program.
“What most knocked me out” about the survey results, he said, “was the intermarriage rate. And these are very secular young people. RAJE holds out the prize of the free trip [to Israel and Europe], as does Birthright. But the difference here is you have to get involved [in the educational programs leading up to the trip], and RAJE is outperforming Birthright” in terms of level of involvement in Jewish life.
Levin said he is urging UJA-Federation to increase its support of the group. “We [federation] do a lot to help, but this study says, ‘Hey, we’re misallocating,’ we need to do a lot more for them.”
He said that when he first became involved in federation he was “warned that the Russian Jews aren’t religious and don’t like big institutions. But Rabbi Tokarsky has changed this generation in a serious way.”
Others caution against reading too much into the study, pointing out that the RAJE cohort is a small segment of the Russian Jewish community here, the majority of whom are not drawn to its intensive program.
Officials of UJA-Federation, which over the years contributed almost $400,000 to RAJE, expressed pride in their early support for the group. Alisa Rubin Kurshan, executive vice president of UJA-Federation, noted that the charity was “an early and generous supporter before any studies or national recognition. We deeply admire Rabbi Tokarsky, and his efforts have yielded impressive results.” She said UJA-Federation, which no longer funds RAJE, is “thrilled so many are now aware of RAJE’S excellent work in the Russian-speaking Jewish community. We also believe there is great potential for RAJE to have an impact in other North American communities that also have significant numbers of Russian- speaking Jews.”
Rabbi Tokarsky is focusing on those communities, in part because he believes it would be difficult to replicate RAJE’s success in the general American Jewish community. He noted that the majority of young Russian Jews live in areas with a large, concentrated number of Jews, commute to a local college from home and have relatives in Israel and a strong interest in visiting them.
One expert on trends in American Jewish life agrees with Rabbi Tokarsky about the unique ingredients of the Russian Jewish community that make its young people particularly ripe for a program like RAJE. Steven Bayme, national director of the contemporary American Jewish life department at AJC, says “it is no surprise that the outcomes of the RAJE survey are much more Jewishly impressive” [than other surveys of American Jewish young people]. “These young people have put in 250 hours of Jewish education up front,” unlike Birthright participants, for example, who need not undertake any time-consuming educational commitments prior to going on the Israel trip.
The RAJE participants are among “the most interested, attracted and engaged,” Bayme said, of American Jews their age, adding that the young Russian Jews tend to be first-generation Americans, who have a natural affinity to socialize with other fellow Jewish immigrants. And they and their parents have rejected a Russian system that banned religion. “The opportunity for them to study Judaism is cherished more” by this group than native American Jews “who don’t feel any sense of loss,” he said, and may take for granted their right to explore and practice their religion.
Bayme noted that the survey dealt little with the RAJE curriculum itself and its seemingly traditional religious approach, which could dissuade some potential participants. But he emphasized that the “most exciting” aspect of the results is that “while others are despairing about Jewish continuity,” the RAJE program indicates the “ability to effect positive change if we have the will to do so.” He said he is “deeply encouraged that they built in the study component,” which affirms that “Jewish education is the real key to the Jewish future.”
Now that the RAJE survey is out, perhaps others in a position to make a difference will take note of the organization’s approach and success, and see that efforts to enhance Jewish identity are not a lost cause.
Gary@jewishweek.org
Associate Editor Jonathan Mark explores the increasing interest among Jews in buying guns to protect their families as terror attacks have increased.
Arms and the man: Josh Levy at the Gun For Hire shooting range, in Woodland Park, N.J. Courtesy of Josh Levy
In Jerusalem’s early morning, when lips barely flutter in that time for silent prayer, when feet are required, in the manner of angels, to come together as if they were not limbs at all, two Arabs entered the Har Nof shul with a gun and meat cleaver, killing four, leaving arms still wrapped in tefillin in puddles of blood. It took seconds. The police arrived in minutes on that late November day.
With the Temple Mount volcanic, with a third intifada percolating, an Orthodox blogger named Carl (“some would even call me ultra-Orthodox”), a corporate lawyer who now lives in Jerusalem, wrote of November’s attack, “I’m seriously thinking of getting a gun license.” Carl added, “I don’t believe anyone in my morning prayer service … has one.”
Jewish fears are airborne, traveling like the clouds. During the Dreyfus trial, Sholom Aleichem half-joked, “When it rains in Paris, open umbrellas in Odessa.”
And then came the attack last month on the Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights, where a 22-year-old Israeli student was stabbed in the head in the sect’s main shul, fueling yet more fear about whether synagogues are still sanctuaries. No, Jews don’t hunt, but what happens when we become the hunted?
In August, both the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America, two of the largest groups in the Orthodox world, published statements condemning violence and in favor of gun control. Then, in the days after Har Nof, the New York-based The Yeshiva World News published a halachic analysis, “Packing (A Gun) In Shul.”
Rabbi Yair Hoffman, a popular Orthodox author and educator, wrote, “[Does] the current situation in Israel warrant that a number of well-trained members of shuls and yeshivos should arm themselves with guns at this point? This author believes that there is no question it should.”
A few years ago in the Los Angeles area, a “Children of Holocaust Survivors” group formed “Jews Can Shoot” to teach defensive firearm use. They explained to their members, “The worldwide threat … is real. And, although Jews in he United States have felt a greater sense of security, the rise of anti-Semitism in America is alarming. … If you want to become comfortable and competent with a firearm so that when necessary you can defend yourself, your family and your home, these classes may be for you.” Suddenly the Jewish vocabulary includes Glock, Smith & Wesson, a Ruger Security 6, and Colt double action revolvers such as the Python and Anaconda.
The Washington State-based “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership” was founded in 1989 to educate “about the historical evils that Jews have suffered when they have been disarmed.”
In northern New Jersey, the Golani Rifle and Pistol Club got going in 2003 in response to the rise in observant Jews owning guns and wanting shooting events (they meet at local ranges around six times a year) that were not on Shabbat, and get-togethers that were kosher (one Golani branch in Philadelphia calls itself “Bagels and Glocks”).
Yali Elkin, 39, of Teaneck, a member of Golani, started thinking about getting a gun in 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. “I was taken by the lawlessness,” he said. In the chaos, over 200 policemen in New Orleans “walked off the job. That crystalized for me how fragile, how delicate was the patina of civilization that we all take for granted,” he said. “If something like that happened where I live, would I be able to protect my home, my family?”
And, of course, said Elkin, he couldn’t help but have his fears reinforced by the shooting of six people, one fatally, in the Seattle Jewish Federation in 2006; the 2009 “foiled bomb plot at the Riverdale Jewish Center [and Riverdale Temple]; the firebombing of [two New Jersey] shuls in Bergen County. It’s impossible to ignore. It’s hard to watch the news,” said Elkin, “and not think this is 1939.” What if someone shows up, not with a knife, as in Crown Heights, but “with an AK-47? It should be obvious that Jews are targets, and the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Elkin, a corporate attorney, now owns two pistols and a rifle, and learned to shoot at “Gun For Hire,” a range in Woodland Park, N.J. “I would recognize people from shul, ‘Oh, you too!’”
Josh Levy, a member and “public relations officer” for Golani, said the group is about Jewish “fellowship, tzedakah [for Israeli causes], and self-defense.”
“The security and preservation of the Jewish people are very important factors for the Golani gun club,” he said.
The “Golani” name was adopted along the way because, Levy explained, “Jews are aware of the [Israel Defense Force’s] Golani brigade so it was a way to advertise to Jews that we were interested in self-defense.”
Levy points out that what he sees as the rise in gun ownership hasn’t led to a rise in Jewish crime. “You don’t find people flying off the handle,” said Levy. “Jews are among the most cautious and peaceful people, I know of. That makes them perfect gun owners.” Nevertheless, he said, peaceful Jews don’t live in a peaceful world.
Rabbi Dovid Bendory, of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, based in Hartford, Wis., said, the current “self-disarmament” of Jews is a phenomenon of history. From Abraham through the Shoah, Jews used weapons in self-defense. In Warsaw, “a few hundred Jews with tens of firearms held off the German army for weeks.”
Rabbi Bendory said he’s seen an uptick in Jewish gun ownership,
“absolutely. No question. There’s been a surge, every year for the past 10 years, in terms of inquiries about education, training, and gun ownership, individuals expressing a need who hadn’t previously felt it.” He attributes the shift to “the resurgence of anti-Semitism,” increasingly virulent “anti-Zionism,” and “what’s been going on in France [such as the recent invasion of a Jewish house] just the other week.”
Golani’s Levy said he’s heard the discussions and opinions, pro and con, about bringing guns to shul. “We take the position that it’s a good idea for Jews to train themselves in the use of firearms, and to be ready to use them in a sober and prudent way in any situation that requires it. I’m not going to tell you that we have a recommendation for every shul, but we are certainly in favor of Jews being able to respond effectively to deadly attacks.”
“The police are wonderful,” he added, “but police can’t be everywhere at once.”
Rabbi Bendory said he’s being asked “all the time” about guns in shul. “I think in Israel, [yes], there is no question. In Europe, no question. In the United States, it’s a judgment call, depending on circumstance. Shabbos observance makes the discussion a little more subtle. [Rabbis have also relaxed the prohibition against carrying cell phones on Shabbat, for security purposes.] Is there a legitimate chance that this firearm may legitimately be needed to protect life in that shul? In many shuls the answer is yes.” The Department of Homeland Security has allocated up to $75,000 to dozens of synagogues and Jewish institutions across the country, validating the sense of threat.
But, answers Rabbi Bendory, “certainly in many shuls, the answer [to guns] is still no. But once you are in those circumstances where security permissions are necessary, firearms need to be part of the conversation. I say these things with tremendous sadness. Some people call me a [gun] advocate. All I’m advocating is self-reliance and Jewish safety.”
Also this issue, retired Jewish cops critical of the mayor; Mario Cuomo's ties to the Jewish community recalled; Jewish groups vulnerable to computer hacking; victory for eruv supporters in Westhampton Beach; reviews of films at the New York Jewish Film Festival; and Culture Editor Sandee Brawarsky on Rep. Steve Israel's debut novel, "The Global War On Morris," which finds humor in Washington politics.
Retired Jewish Cops Back PBA President, Criticize Mayor
Two officers and an NYPD volunteer weigh in on tensions in the city.
Doug Chandler
Jewish Week Correspondent
Tensions in the city between the police and City Hall are running high. Getty Images
Wilton Sekzer, a retired sergeant in the New York Police Department, joined 25,000 other current and former cops last Saturday as they mourned Rafael Ramos, one of two patrolmen gunned down while sitting in their patrol car Dec. 20 in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
But as angry as he is at Mayor Bill de Blasio, a feeling he shares with much of the force, he wouldn’t have turned his back on the mayor as he delivered the eulogy, as hundreds of other officers did.
Sekzer, one of the most prominent Jewish members of the NYPD community, said he stood in an outdoor area designated for representatives of the NYPD’s various fraternal groups, including the Shomrim Society. That placed him far from the scene near Glendale’s Christ Tabernacle Church, where officers engaged in their spontaneous, but controversial, action.
Had he known about it, though, Sekzer wouldn’t have followed suit.
“To me, personally, it just seems like it wasn’t the best place to do it. But I understand why they did it,” said Sekzer, who lost a 31-year-son 13 years ago as two planes slammed into the World Trade Center.
Sekzer is one of two retired police officers who spoke to The Jewish Week about the ambush of the two NYPD cops, Ramos and Wenjian Liu, as well as about the weeks of protests over alleged racial bias in the criminal-justice system. The protests followed the decision of grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island not to indict officers involved in the questionable killings of two unarmed black citizens.
Leaders of the Shomrim Society couldn’t comment without permission from the NYPD’s public information office and pointed out that their group, now about 2,000 members strong, doesn’t take stands on political matters.
But retired officers are under no such restrictions, and both men interviewed by The Jewish Week agreed with the views of union leaders and others who see de Blasio as anti-police and have said he has “blood on his hands.” One of those leaders is Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, who, days before the ambush in Bedford-Stuyvesant, urged his members to sign a petition requesting that the mayor not speak at their funerals should they be killed in the line of duty.
Other leaders in the city, including Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive director of the New York Board of Rabbis, have criticized the extremes on both sides of the divide and called for calmer words.
Sekzer, though, echoed Lynch’s comments, reflecting his anger at de Blasio and those who have been protesting the police.
“As much as people say this is an outrageous thing to do,” Sekzer said, referring to Lynch’s remark, “This SOB does have the blood of cops on his hands.” Like Lynch, Sekzer said he was furious when the mayor told the press about warning Dante, his biracial, teenage son, to be careful in any encounter with police officers.
“When I hear a statement like that, I have smoke coming from my ears,” Sekzer said. “It sounds like the kind of comments you’d hear from the Black Panthers or the Black Liberation Army” in the 1960s or ’70s.
Sekzer also supports the officers involved in the death of Eric Garner, the black resident of Staten Island who died during an arrest after police officers wrestled him to the ground, compressing his neck and chest, according to the city’s medical examiner, who ruled the death a homicide.
“The bottom line is, the guy refuses to be arrested, which is against the law,” Sekzer said. “It doesn’t matter if the guy is right. It doesn’t matter if the cop is wrong.”
Like Sekzer, M. Waldman spoke of an “anti-police climate” in the city, but he places the blame not only on de Blasio, but on President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.
“They created this” atmosphere, said Waldman, a retired detective who preferred that his first name not be used. “Who will speak up for police if not the police themselves?”
A recent article from PolitiFact, the nonpartisan fact-checking site, cited repeated instances in the past few months in which the president praised law-enforcement officers and deplored any violence against them. But the words have apparently done little to assuage the tide of resentment felt by Waldman and others.
Meanwhile, unlike Waldman, Sekzer believes that both sides can do more to heal emotions.
“I think the public needs to have a better understanding of the sacrifices police make. …[while officers] need to have a better understanding of how to deal with the community,” he said.
Sekzer would also back at least some reform of the NYPD, saying he believes officers need additional training — a comment that aligns him with at least one of the mayor’s views. Sounding like the sergeant he once was, Sekzer said the training is particularly needed for young cops: “Someone’s got to smack them in the head and say, ‘You’ve got to learn how to talk to people.’”
Yet another perspective came from Miriam Nockenofsky, an Orthodox Jew who worked for the NYPD in the 1990s as a volunteer, who campaigned for de Blasio and who knows the mayor.
Nockenofsky is now as critical of the mayor as some of her former colleagues, but she believes the mayor isn’t anti-police. Instead, she said, “he’s like a deer in headlights,” trying to please members of the NYPD and protesters at the same time.
Regarding Lynch, Nockenofsky understands why he made his comments — “the cops are petrified,” she said — but believes de Blasio’s language was much too destructive.
“Does he want to take responsibility” for any of the consequences? asked Nockenofsky, who has a background in psychology and domestic violence work. “Words are extremely powerful, and once you say something, you can’t take it back.”
Instead of lashing out publicly at the mayor, Nockenofsky said, Lynch should have told the mayor that they needed to have a meeting in private, “with no media and no cameras.”
The unrest and the anger at police can’t continue, she said. “Something has to be done.”
This article first appeared last Wednesday on The Jewish Week website,thejewishweek.com.
The governor, who died last week, married strident liberalism and sensitivity to the Orthodox.
JTA
Mario Cuomo, seated, at the 1988 General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations held in New Orleans. Robert A. Cumins
Mario Cuomo, a three-term New York governor, was the rare politician who appealed to the Jewish tent’s opposite poles.
A strident liberal with a nuanced understanding of the sense of vulnerability among the deeply religious in a secular society, Cuomo died of heart failure last Thursday, just hours after his son Andrew was sworn in for his second term as governor. He was 82.
Lopsided Jewish support helped propel Cuomo into the governor’s office in 1982, 1986 and 1990. The state’s large Jewish community joined other liberal constituencies in celebrating the man who emerged in the 1980s as the most prominent vanguard against President Ronald Reagan.
Cuomo, addressing a gathering of Holocaust survivors in 1985, faulted Reagan for all-too-blithely ignoring Germany’s past when the president agreed to mark the 40th anniversary of D-Day at a cemetery containing the graves of SS officers.
“The truth is, even those who are free of anti-Semitism — even those who are almost certainly sincere in their revulsion at the Holocaust — are tempted to forget, to declare this ugly chapter of human history closed, done with, over,” Cuomo said.
The jibe was of a piece with rhetoric that helped vault Cuomo to national prominence the previous year, when he keynoted the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. Reagan’s sunny conservatism was appealing, Cuomo acknowledged, but ignored harsh realities.
“A ‘shining city’ is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well,” Cuomo said. “But there’s another city, another part to the shining city, the part where some people can’t pay their mortgages and most young people can’t afford one, where students can’t afford the education they need and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.”
Cuomo credited his sensitivity to the needs of the Orthodox to his childhood in Queens, where he served as a “Shabbos goy” for a synagogue up the street from the grocery owned by his Sicilian immigrant parents.
The job clearly left an impression. He recalled sharing the experience with Branch Rickey, the baseball executive who integrated the sport when he hired Jackie Robinson for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“When I told him that I had been an altar boy and a ‘Shabbos goy,’ he wanted to know all about it,” Cuomo told a Rickey biographer.
Cuomo created an office of assistant to the governor for Jewish affairs and broke with his party’s liberal wing on a number of church-state issues.
He helped Kiryas Joel, a charedi Orthodox enclave in Orange County, maintain a separate school district despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.
The website for his unsuccessful 1994 bid to win a fourth term noted that he established the Kosher Food Advisory Council.
“He has consistently pushed for stronger enforcement of kosher regulations,” it said.
Cuomo also backed a bill that allowed the charedi Orthodox ambulance corps Hatzolah to expand its service.
During his 1990 election campaign, Cuomo beamed when he earned the blessing of the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who handed him two of the dollars he traditionally gave out to supplicants for good luck — one each for the election and his third term.
“This is more than I expected, rabbi, and this will require me to give back more, which I will,” Cuomo said, sporting a silver-bordered black kipa.
Cuomo’s sensitivity to Jewish issues extended beyond the delicate church-state balance that the observant must navigate. He was an unstinting Israel supporter, visiting the country in 1992.
“Until you come here, you know the words but don’t understand the music,” he said.
Cuomo banned the state of NY from doing business with anyone who complied with the Arab boycott and expanded business relations with Israel.
Cuomo criticized New York Mayor David Dinkins’ handling of the 1991 riots in Crown Heights, which pitted blacks against Orthodox Jews and resulted in the death of Yankel Rosenbaum. Cuomo appointed an investigative committee, which eviscerated the city’s handling of the riots.
“Mario Cuomo was someone who understood both the needs of the Jewish community on a practical level but also on an emotional one,” said Ezra Friedlander, an Orthodox lobbyist. “Mario Cuomo was a man of faith who understood with every fiber of his body the accommodations that government has to provide to communities of faith to flourish, including the Jewish community.”
After the Sony Pictures hack, cyber security concerns are high. Are Jewish groups taking the risks seriously?
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
For Jewish organizations, cyber security is a growing problem. Fotolia
A large Reform congregation in Central Florida is exceptionally vulnerable to a cyber attack, though they don’t know it.
The synagogue’s website is running an outdated version of the Drupal web platform. According to a Drupal security advisory released on Oct. 15, Drupal 7 sites that did not update would be vulnerable to a so-called SQL Injective Attack, an offensive that allows a hacker to steal all data from a site, claim administrator privileges and install methods to return whenever they pleased. Drupal rated the security risk 25/25 — “highly critical.”
Drupal provided users with a solution: install the latest version of the platform. However, nearly three months after the security advisory, the synagogue’s website has not been upgraded.
The site is hosted by JVillage Network, a company that helps Jewish organizations “maximize” their online presence, according to its website. The congregation is not the only website hosted by JVillage Network that has not been upgraded to avoid this critical security risk. Others including in northern Westchester County, Massachusetts, and Broward County, Fla., are running outdated, vulnerable versions of the Drupal platform.
According to Russel Neiss, a technology consultant who has worked with Jewish organizations on digital strategy and app development, as of November, 43 out of the 105 sites hosted by JVillage Network were out of date. Since then, according to Neiss, the sites have not been updated, though Jill Minkoff, the president of JVillage Network, assured Neiss in an email that “we are aware of this and have been working to deal with it quickly.” (The Jewish Week checked 11 of the 43 this week and none had been updated.)
This is not only JVillage Network’s problem. Many Jewish organizations, including nearly half of the organizations listed in the Slingshot 2014 Guide, a directory for top Jewish philanthropies, are running an outdated content management system or utilizing some web plugin that has known security vulnerabilities, according to Neiss.
“The Jewish community is unlike any other community with regard to cyber threats,” said Paul Goldenberg, cofounder of the Secure Community Network, or SCN, a nonprofit created in 2004 to beef up security at U.S. Jewish institutions. He said that SCN has tracked threats from nation states, including Lebanon, Pakistan and Iran, as well as non-state actors, including Palestinian and neo-Nazi groups.
According to Goldenberg, a cyber attack could have the greatest long-term impact on the credibility and resiliency of any organization. “Senior administrators need to understand that if systems go down, the names of children in their camps or the financial information of their donors could get into the hands of those seeking to do harm.”
Neiss personally contacted JVillage Network in November to inform them of the Drupal security advisory, and the subsequent vulnerability of their sites.
Jill Minkoff, president of JVillage Network, said they are aware of the security threat. “Security is a top priority for us,” she said. “We have retained some additional resources to help us fix this.” She couldn’t say when the current crop of outdated sites would be updated.
A synagogue representative from the Central Florida congregation said she had “no idea” that the site was at risk. The Jewish Week subsequently sent them a link to the Drupal security advisory.
“The problem really is that people don’t know better,” said Neiss. “The developer created a website that’s terribly insecure, and the client, who has chosen to outsource the problem, has no idea.”
Goldenberg agreed that the trend within Jewish organizations to outsource digital development is at the problem’s core.
“There’s a major disconnect between the top executives in organizations and those responsible for cyber security,” he said. “They’re operating as separate entities within the same enterprise; there needs to be a convergence between the two.”
The risks of lax standards of cybersecurity go beyond putting a website out of commission. Sharing his computer screen with a Jewish Week reporter, Neiss demonstrated how a hacker could break into the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s new CombatHateU App, which allows college students to report incidents of anti-Semitism on campus. The developers of the app did not encrypt two secret keys in the source code of the app, allowing a potential hacker to break in and access the phone numbers of anyone who sent a text message through the app.
Neiss informed the Wiesenthal Center of this risk on Dec. 19. He also reached out to Hillel International, which announced a partnership with the Wiesenthal Center on CombatHateU.
Rick Eaton, co-director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Digital Terrorism and Hate project, told the Jewish Week, “We’ve looked into it.”
“We’re affirmatively saying that all the data is safe,” he said. According to Eaton, the Wiesenthal Center outsourced the production of their three apps (CombatHate, CombatHateU, and Digital Terrorism and Hate) to Emergent Apps, a digital development company. Eaton himself said that he doesn’t have a technological background.
Eaton also said that the Twillio account for the CombatHateU app, a program that sends and receives SMS test messages worldwide, had been disabled because of security concerns. As of Jan. 6, quick test trial proved this false. The Twillio account belonging to the CombatHateU app is still functioning and unprotected.
Demetrio Cuzzocrea, president and CEO of Emergent Apps, told the Jewish Week that API protocols, a set of routines for building software applications, were “followed to the letter” in the creation of the CombatHateU App.
Responding to Neiss’ concern that the two account keys were not encrypted in the code of the app, Cuzzocrea said, “Malicious hacking is different. Anyone can be hacked. But at no time was any personal information visible to the public or comprised in any way.” He said additional security measures are being implemented to bolster the app’s security.
“These folks seem much more interested in protecting the name of their organizations than actually seriously interested in fixing the problem,” said Neiss via email. “If they were interested in the latter they should discontinue the app until the issue is fixed, and release a statement to their users informing them of the problem.”
According to Goldenberg, keeping the bigger picture in mind when dealing with web security if key. “The long-term resilience of the Jewish community is at risk if senior executives don’t start to think about cybersecurity seriously right now,” he said. “There’s no room for excuses.”
2nd Circuit's ruling on Westhampton Beach ritual boundary likely to have wide-ranging effects.
Amy Sara Clark
Staff Writer
After six years, the legal battle over an eruv in the Hamptons may finally be coming to a close — and the effects of the federal appeals court decision are far reaching.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court affirmed a lower court’s decision that the ritual boundary created by attaching plastic strips, called lechies, to utility poles in Westhampton Beach, L.I., does not violate the First Amendment.
“The appeals court is saying that there’s not a problem of church and state separation — it’s a death knell to that argument,” said Moish Tuchman, president of Hampton Synagogue and a member of the East End Eruv Association.
The Jan. 6 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit goes well beyond the battle in Westhampton, said Yehudah Buchweitz, an attorney at of Weil, Gotshal and Manges, which is representing the East End Eruv Association on a pro bono basis.
“The assertion that attaching lechies to poles to help make an eruv is a violation of the First Amendment is one of the main defenses that municipalities have against them, and I think this decision effectively eliminates those defenses,” he said. Buchweitz noted that the ruling follows a similar decision by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002 upholding an eruv in Tenafly, N.J.
Together these two federal appeals courts cover six states — New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware — plus the Virgin Islands. But the effects of the decision are even more far reaching, Buchweitz suggested.
“I think if, at this point, you have the 3rd Circuit and the 2nd Circuit having come to the same conclusion — and they’re right — it would be hard for any other court to come to a different conclusion,” he said.
The Second Circuit Court’s decision affirmed the decision of a lower court — the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York — to reject a case brought by the group Jewish People for the Betterment of Westhampton Beach. While the lower court did not explain its reasons for rejecting the case, the Second Circuit Court did, giving as one of its reasons that the lechies are “nearly invisible.”
“No reasonable observer who notices the strips on LIPA utility poles would draw the conclusion that a state actor is thereby endorsing religion,” the three judges wrote in their ruling. “Every court to have considered whether similar government actions violate the Establishment Clause has agreed that they do not,” they added.
Attorneys for the Jewish People For The Betterment Of Westhampton Beach did not respond to a request for comment and efforts to reach members of the group have so far been unsuccessful.
Other cases connected to the Westhampton Beach eruv are still pending, but they are unlikely to succeed, said, Buchweitz.
“We think there’s no merit to them, but we haven’t won them yet. There are a few steps to go.”
How has Westhampton Beach’s Orthodox community reacted to the decision?
“They’re really ecstatic,” said Tuchman. “It’s really a huge, huge, huge victory.”’ amyclark@jewishweek.org
From the Israeli air force, to a Houston deli, to I.B. Singer, non-fiction cinema is key to the Jewish Film Festival.
George Robinson
Special To The Jewish Week
Scenes from “The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer,” above, “Above and Beyond,” top right, and “Deli Man,” right.
Note: This is the first of three articles on this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival.
As the New York Jewish Film Festival nears the quarter-century mark with its 24th annual edition opening on Wednesday, Jan. 14, the surprise isn’t the event’s longevity. Backed by two formidable New York institutions, The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and located in an urban center that includes a goodly percentage of the world’s Jews, the failure of such a program would be more of a shock.
But, as this year’s round-up proves, the reach of the festival beyond that community, as indicated by the number of films that will receive theatrical releases after the event, has become significant.
That shift is based, to some extent, on the proliferation of cinemas hungry for product, but the sheer quality of the films on offer in this year’s festival suggests that industry pressures aren’t the only reason for the NYJFF’s growing reach. Add to that the growing audience interest in non-fiction cinema, always a strength of the festival, and the consistently high quality and marketing profile of recent Israeli films, and you have a recipe for ongoing success.
Consider the case of Roberta Grossman’s “Above and Beyond,” a skillful examination of the birth of the Israeli Air Force. The darker realities of the Shoah and its aftermath are at the film’s center, a brisk recounting of the pivotal role of Jewish volunteers (mostly but not exclusively American) in the creation of the air force. Nearly 70 years after the founding of the Jewish state, it is almost too easy to forget that the original aerial component of Israel’s military consisted of less than a half-dozen rickety fighter planes and a handful of second-hand transports, flown by a band of young, carousing WWII vets. Grossman managed to interview many of the surviving fliers, and a colorful and candid group they are. George Lichter, a hard-nosed Brooklyn boy, speaks bluntly for all of them when he says, “I knew I was risking my citizenship and jail time [by breaking the American arms embargo]. I didn’t give a s***.”
The true story manages to offer the cloak-and-dagger elements of the weapons smuggling trade, the Boys’ Own adventure of high-altitude combat and the machinations of international politics. Add to that mix a healthy dose of testosterone and schoolboy high-jinks and you have a recipe for a Hollywood adventure film. Indeed, actor Paul Reubens, whose father Martin Rubenfeld flew for Israel during the War of Independence, characterizes his dad as “a swaggering Indiana Jones” character.
But the stakes were ominously higher than in a Spielberg-Lucas comic thriller. As Grossman’s witnesses remind us repeatedly, the life-or-death nature of the struggle for Palestine/Israel was not a joke, not a boyish tale of derring-do. The heroism and death of Modi Alon, the first commander of Israel’s first fighter squadron, is a story and theme that anchors the middle of the film soberly. Grossman’s use of several historians — most notably Benny Morris — helps put events into a larger historical context. But the real center of the film is the group of American fliers whose Jewish identities were profoundly shaped by the experience of helping make the dream of a modern Jewish state a reality. The film opens theatrically later this month.
On a lighter note, there is Eric Greenberg Anjou’s “Deli Man,” a sprightly look at the sagging fortunes of the most important contribution of American Jews to the nation’s cuisine. As the film notes, at the peak of the Jewish immigrant influx early in the 20th century, New York City had approximately 1,500 Jewish delicatessens; today there are about 150 in the whole of North America. Blending a whirlwind tour of many of those eateries, some astute historical observers and the saga of Kenny and Ziggy’s in Houston (as seen through the eyes of its co-owner, a third-generation deli man and graduate of the Cordon Bleu school), the film is a gleeful celebration of the shifting demographics and foodways of a particular slice of Ashkenazi culture. The shifts are primarily due, of course, to assimilation and the push for healthier eating. (Make that slice lean, please, with a garlic pickle.) Like “Above and Beyond” “Deli Man” opens theatrically in a few weeks.
The festival’s opening night film, “The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer,” directed by Asaf Galay and Shaul Betser, is a similarly humorous documentary with an underlying, serious theme. As recounted in its brief 76-minute running time, the film is the story of a brilliant young Yiddish writer who left Warsaw for New York in 1935, a step ahead of the gathering storms of war and persecution, and found that he wanted English-language translators to expand his readership beyond the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward. Singer’s first prominent translator was a young Saul Bellow, but gradually the writer replaced his male translators with attractive young women. Apparently, Singer was as sexually voracious as he was literarily prolific, and he acquired a veritable harem of female writers-translators-muses.
In fact, the film leaves the question of his carnal relations with these younger colleagues rather ambiguous. As Jane Hadda, Singer’s biographer and an astute judge of his behavior, notes in the film, every one of the women seems to think that she was the only one at whom he ever made a pass. What emerges from the film is a portrait of an unlikely Lothario, less than an ideal husband and partner, a sparkling writer with a strong line of barely suppressed erotic tensions, a worthy winner of the Nobel Prize but a profoundly irresponsible family man. Despite its brevity, “Muses” rambles a bit, and its ramshackle structure undercuts some of its insights, but Singer himself is always amusing; and the cacophony of would-be heiresses to his legacy is amusing in a catty way.
The 24th annual New York Jewish Film Festival, produced by the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, runs from Jan. 14-29; screenings will take place at the Walter Reade Theater and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, both located on W. 65th Street in Lincoln Center. For more information, go towww.filmlinc.com.
The L.I. Democrat’s debut novel (featuring one Morris Feldstein of Great Neck) grew out of his experiences in the House Armed Services Committee.
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
Israel: “Major threats” exist, “but there are moments in government that are funny.” Katrina Hajagos
‘Tsuris ahead,” Steve Israel opens his debut novel, “The Global War on Morris” (Simon & Schuster). I’m not sure how many of his congressional colleagues in Washington would know the Yiddish word for troubles, but the meaning quickly becomes clear.
“Being in Congress under the best of circumstances is a world of tsuris,” the Long Island Democrat tells The Jewish Week. “In the post-9/11 environment it’s even more complex.”
The eponymous Morris Feldstein of Great Neck is really auf tsuris; he has serious troubles. A gentle-natured man who loves baseball and black-and-white movies, Feldstein prefers anonymity, and if he had a life philosophy it would be, “Don’t make waves.” He works as a pharmaceutical salesman, serves as second vice-president of his synagogue’s Men Club, and returns home daily, at the same time, for a dinner of take-out food procured by his wife Rona, wanting only to watch the Mets from his recliner. No one really notices Morris, until government agents wrongfully finger him as a terrorist, central to a plot to blow up a presidential debate.
The idea for this novel was sparked by Israel’s experience in Congress: Once in 2006, during a House Armed Services Committee hearing, military officials revealed that they had accidently spied on a group of elderly Quakers, mistaking these religious pacifists who were engaged in a peaceful protest for terrorists.
“At the end of the hearing,” the upbeat Israel says, “I had my story.” He began thinking about how plausible it was for an innocent person to get fingered as a public enemy, even with all the government’s sophisticated surveillance systems. That was when Morris Feldstein was born. The story evolved over the next few years, as other real events, including Israel’s visit to Guantanamo, made their way into the narrative.
“I’d sit in meetings and watch Bush and Cheney,” he said, “and I’d come out and write, describing the scenes.” He’d have to leave his cellphone in a cubicle outside the meeting rooms, but afterwards he’d use it to jot down impressions and details, without disclosing information discussed in these closed-door briefings. He actually wrote and edited the manuscript on his Blackberry and then on his iPhone, in the early mornings, between meetings and while traveling.
“The biggest challenge” on the committee,” he says, “was trying to find the balance between the real threat of terror in the world and our overreaction to that terror.”
“There’s nothing comedic about terror. I believe there are major threats out there, but there are moments in government that are funny.”
When asked about the source of his sense of humor, he says that he can’t say it was a family trait, but rather, “you have to have a sense of humor to survive in this environment,” referring to Congress.
And, Israel says, it’s Jewish humor. “There are two things you can do when you’re exposed to challenge: You can cry and crawl under a bed, or you can use humor. I chose humor.”
The congressman says that he could have written a non-fiction public policy book about terrorism, but that it’s more interesting and accessible when done as satire.
The novel is funny, fast-paced and cinematic, divided into short chapters with titles like “Monsoon over Miami,” “Nothing to Fear but Fear” and “The Safe House with Lox.” The trio of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney make appearances, as does the sage Rabbi Hillel, along with an advanced secret supercomputer named NICK for whom “everyone was either suspicious or a suspect, a patriot or a Democrat.” The many security and intelligence task forces and agencies trip over each other in a major bureaucratic tangle.
As for the outgoing Rona, she realizes that she can’t change Morris, so she tries to change the world — she joins Hadassah’s social action committee, volunteers for local political campaigns, and makes friends everywhere. While her husband might be boring, she counts her blessings that Morris isn’t the kind of guy who would cheat on her. A marital misstep (his) results in their buying the Florida condominium she covets, and the narrative shifts from Great Neck to Boca.
The author raises another idea that drove the plot — his own love of America, which makes him think that people who come here with dark motives might also fall in love with the idea of democracy.
Israel says that he always wanted to be a writer, a public official and to play for the Mets. (Two out of three isn’t bad.) His interest in political life was awakened in fourth grade, when the principal announced that Robert F. Kennedy had been shot. In the mid-’90s, he took a fiction-writing course at NYU and flourished.
Before serving in Congress, Israel served on the Huntington, L.I. town board and founded the American Jewish Congress office in Suffolk County. He edited two books, “Great Jewish Speeches Throughout History” and “Charge! History’s Greatest Military Speeches,” and has written satire for The New Yorker. Now, he is writing a column for The Huffington Post, “Kings of the Hill,” sharing humorous insider accounts of Congress.
“The Global War on Morris” is dedicated to “former vice president Dick Cheney. And to my Dad, who didn’t particularly care for him.” Israel speaks lovingly of his late father, a lifelong Democrat who closely followed his son’s career. The dedication doesn’t stop Israel from taking sharp aim at Cheney, noting that he looks more frightening in person than the way the caricatures portray him — and that they don’t capture the permanent sneer. He also pokes fun at a senator from New York who is “physiologically incapable of declining any request that involved a camera.”
Israel, who tries to travel to Israel at least once a year, was part of the first congressional visit to Israel last summer during the war. Looking ahead, he has come out strongly in support of Hillary Clinton for president and hopes that she’ll run. Back to his iPhone, he’s now working on a new novel, a parody having to do with gun control, set on Long Island.
He enjoys telling a story of how he and other Jewish representatives from New York, including former Congressman Gary Ackerman and Anthony Wiener, as well as Nadler, were engaged in conversation and started yelling and screaming at each other. “And all these members of Congress were looking at us and Gary stood up and said: ‘It’s OK, this is just how we talk.’”
Before leaving for a radio interview, he signs a copy of the novel with a message to all, “Here’s to a tsuris-free 2015.”
U.S. Rep. Steve Israel will be reading from and discussing “The Global War on Morris” on Sunday, Jan. 11, at 2 p.m., at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, 246 Old Walt Whitman Rd., Huntington Station, L.I.
Stay warm and enjoy the read, Gary Rosenblatt P.S. Please check out the newest version ofour website faster and easier to navigate and read for breaking stories, videos and exclusive blogs, op-eds and features. http://www.thejewishweek.com/
Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt
Young Russians Seen Edging Closer To Community
New study shows high Jewish identity among grads of RAJE program; in-marriage rate 94 percent.
Young people of Russian background, coming from secular homes and with little or no formal Jewish education, are considered among the most unaffiliated and at-risk of American Jews in terms of Jewish identity. But a comprehensive new study of that cohort finds that a Brooklyn-based program founded in 2006 to address the problem has produced some striking results.
According to the report, made public here for the first time, graduates of the RAJE (Russian American Jewish Experience) fellowship program are far more likely than their peers to study and practice Judaism, give to Jewish charities, volunteer for a Jewish organization and marry a Jewish spouse.
The program offers free, two-week trips to Israel and Europe for 18-to-30-year-olds who have completed a semester of RAJE classes (250 hours in all) on a wide range of courses on Jewish history, culture and traditions.
Of the 35 percent of RAJE alumni who married after completing the program, “94 percent married a Jewish spouse, and of them, 52 percent report having met their spouse at the RAJE program,” according to the study conducted by the Research Institute for New Americans, led by Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish Community Affairs at the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
Those figures indicate an intermarriage rate of just 6 percent — compared to 17 percent among Russian Jews in New York generally and far below the 28 percent found among Birthright alumni overall. (The national intermarriage rate among American Jews is 58 percent, and 71 percent among the non-Orthodox, according to the Pew Research Center’s Study of Jewish Identity in 2013.)
Among the other dramatic statistics regarding the activities of the respondents: in the last year 78 percent have given to charity, and of that group, 82 percent donated to Jewish organizations; 73 percent participated in Jewish organizational activities; 74 percent attended Shabbat dinner; and 38 percent reported that they took part in “a meeting, demonstration or other action in support of Israel.”
The study was conducted among 300 respondents who were selected randomly from a group of 2,240 RAJE alumni who graduated from the program between 2006 and 2011.
Among the several RAJE alumni I spoke with there was a consistent pattern of involvement: They came from unaffiliated families, had minimal Jewish education but were attracted to RAJE through friends or social media and became interested in learning more about their Jewish heritage and history.
Leona Krasner, a 27-year-old attorney, “just showed up” one day at a RAJE class and liked that it “showed ways to apply Judaism to your life. I learned about the culture and got immersed in it.” She found the teachers, mostly Orthodox with Russian backgrounds, “very accepting,” and guest speakers helpful in talking about their own success and offering advice on “how to improve your life.”
She has become more involved religiously, and though “not Orthodox by any means” and feeling no pressure, she has embraced Shabbat and Jewish holidays. “I see those times now as an opportunity for friends and family to put aside their work and truly enjoy each other.”
Krasner said it is very important to her that she marry someone Jewish and is grateful to RAJE for “creating an excitement” about Jewish life and learning. She went on Birthright after completing the RAJE fellowship and is involved in several Jewish programs and organizations, including UJA-Federation of New York, where she is part of a program of Jews and Muslims who have come together to prepare food for the homeless.
Dmitry, who is 30 and owns an insurance and risk management company here, says RAJE has been “a spark” for his Jewish identity. Active in the program for the last seven years, he said he came back from a Birthright trip feeling “more connected, and I wanted to know more about who I am, what I am coming from and what I am a part of. Most Russian Jews don’t have that.”
He was interested in the classes RAJE offered, which include sessions on spirituality, holidays and customs. “But I probably would not have gone if not for my friends and the [offer of the] trip to Israel.”
Married to a RAJE fellowship classmate, Dmitry (he asked not to identified by his last name) was born in Kiev and came to the U.S. at the age of 6 with his parents. They identified Jewishly and with Israel, he said, but he had no religious training. “My generation is a unique breed,” he explained. “We are proud to be Jewish but know very little about it. It was beaten out of us [in the USSR], but it’s a positive connection, even if we lack the knowledge and background.”
When he first went to RAJE classes Dmitry said he’d heard that the teachers “try to make you more religious,” but he found the environment open, friendly and non-coercive. Over time he has increased his level of observance — “still not 100 percent but I have been keeping Shabbat gradually.” He was initially drawn in by the offer of the trip to Israel but “the more you learn, the more you understand, and my Jewish connection has widened,” he said.
Another graduate who met her spouse through RAJE, Lana Yutskaya, a 28-year-old social worker, said a Birthright trip in 2008 motivated her to learn more about Judaism, with a special interest in spirituality, having grown up with no formal Jewish education.
She says she didn’t see herself “as a religious person, but as I learned the meaning [of Jewish mitzvot and rituals], I became more interested.” She has grown in observance and now keeps a kosher home and lights Shabbat candles in addition to other rituals.
‘We Need To Do A Lot More For Them’
Each of the graduates I spoke with had high praise for Rabbi Mordechai Tokarsky, the soft-spoken founder and national director of RAJE, who is part of the Russian Jewish community. He said more than 10 percent of that community in New York between the ages of 18 and 30 has been reached by RAJE, despite the group’s financial struggles. (Its annual $2 million budget comes mostly from local Russian business people, the rabbi said.)
The point of the survey, the first of its kind, he said, was to learn about “concrete actions more than attitudes” among RAJE alumni regarding Jewish involvement. The four key goals the organization seeks to address are encouraging young people to establish Jewish households, have strong connections to Israel, affiliate with Jewish organizations, and express their spiritual needs through Judaism.
Rabbi Tokarsky is hopeful that the results of the RAJE survey, which he called “incredibly significant,” will motivate philanthropists and foundations committed to strengthening Jewish identity to support and expand the group’s efforts here and in other regions of the U.S.
He said that about 300,000 of the estimated 750,000 Russian-speaking Jews in the U.S. live in the New York area. Other cities with a sizeable Russian Jewish population in North America include Los Angeles and Boston as well as Chicago, Philadelphia and Toronto, where RAJE has begun operating pilot programs.
Jerry Levin, a businessman and the immediate past president of UJA-Federation of New York, has been a guest speaker at RAJE events for a number of years and is highly impressed with the participants and the program.
“What most knocked me out” about the survey results, he said, “was the intermarriage rate. And these are very secular young people. RAJE holds out the prize of the free trip [to Israel and Europe], as does Birthright. But the difference here is you have to get involved [in the educational programs leading up to the trip], and RAJE is outperforming Birthright” in terms of level of involvement in Jewish life.
Levin said he is urging UJA-Federation to increase its support of the group. “We [federation] do a lot to help, but this study says, ‘Hey, we’re misallocating,’ we need to do a lot more for them.”
He said that when he first became involved in federation he was “warned that the Russian Jews aren’t religious and don’t like big institutions. But Rabbi Tokarsky has changed this generation in a serious way.”
Others caution against reading too much into the study, pointing out that the RAJE cohort is a small segment of the Russian Jewish community here, the majority of whom are not drawn to its intensive program.
Officials of UJA-Federation, which over the years contributed almost $400,000 to RAJE, expressed pride in their early support for the group. Alisa Rubin Kurshan, executive vice president of UJA-Federation, noted that the charity was “an early and generous supporter before any studies or national recognition. We deeply admire Rabbi Tokarsky, and his efforts have yielded impressive results.” She said UJA-Federation, which no longer funds RAJE, is “thrilled so many are now aware of RAJE’S excellent work in the Russian-speaking Jewish community. We also believe there is great potential for RAJE to have an impact in other North American communities that also have significant numbers of Russian- speaking Jews.”
Rabbi Tokarsky is focusing on those communities, in part because he believes it would be difficult to replicate RAJE’s success in the general American Jewish community. He noted that the majority of young Russian Jews live in areas with a large, concentrated number of Jews, commute to a local college from home and have relatives in Israel and a strong interest in visiting them.
One expert on trends in American Jewish life agrees with Rabbi Tokarsky about the unique ingredients of the Russian Jewish community that make its young people particularly ripe for a program like RAJE. Steven Bayme, national director of the contemporary American Jewish life department at AJC, says “it is no surprise that the outcomes of the RAJE survey are much more Jewishly impressive” [than other surveys of American Jewish young people]. “These young people have put in 250 hours of Jewish education up front,” unlike Birthright participants, for example, who need not undertake any time-consuming educational commitments prior to going on the Israel trip.
The RAJE participants are among “the most interested, attracted and engaged,” Bayme said, of American Jews their age, adding that the young Russian Jews tend to be first-generation Americans, who have a natural affinity to socialize with other fellow Jewish immigrants. And they and their parents have rejected a Russian system that banned religion. “The opportunity for them to study Judaism is cherished more” by this group than native American Jews “who don’t feel any sense of loss,” he said, and may take for granted their right to explore and practice their religion.
Bayme noted that the survey dealt little with the RAJE curriculum itself and its seemingly traditional religious approach, which could dissuade some potential participants. But he emphasized that the “most exciting” aspect of the results is that “while others are despairing about Jewish continuity,” the RAJE program indicates the “ability to effect positive change if we have the will to do so.” He said he is “deeply encouraged that they built in the study component,” which affirms that “Jewish education is the real key to the Jewish future.”
Now that the RAJE survey is out, perhaps others in a position to make a difference will take note of the organization’s approach and success, and see that efforts to enhance Jewish identity are not a lost cause.
Gary@jewishweek.org
OPINION
2014 Was The Year Of Extremism Francine Klagsbrun - Special To The Jewish Week
Francine Klagsbrun
In late November, three members of a Jewish group in Israel called Lehava (meaning “flame”) set fire to a mixed Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem, burning out its first-grade classroom and forcing it to close, at least temporarily. The group’s stated aim is to end Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in Israel.
In reality, it is a racist organization whose members have beaten Palestinians in the street, waged campaigns to stop Israeli employers from hiring Arab workers, and incited anti-Arab violence and terror. Its leader, Benzi Gupstein, is a disciple of the late Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was banned from Israel in 1994 because of its racism. The three young men indicted in the school torching laughed when arrested, admitting proudly that they opposed Arab-Jewish coexistence.
If I could choose one word to characterize the past year, it would be “extremism.” Even though the Lehava activists in Israel pose little threat to the country as a whole, they are cut from the same extremist cloth as the ISIS terrorists who menace the Middle East. That group came into our consciousness in 2014, although it was formed about 10 years earlier with ties to al Qaeda. After the two groups split some months ago, ISIS began making news almost on a daily basis. In May it kidnapped more than 140 Kurdish schoolboys in Syria; in June and July it took over large numbers of cities and oil fields in that country; in August and September, in its most bestial behavior, it beheaded U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and then Peter Kassig in November.
The group’s goal, its leaders have proclaimed, is to create a caliphate, an Islamic state spread across the Middle East and eventually across the world, with authority over the globe’s more than a billion Muslims. A related group, Boko Haram, in Nigeria, also speaks of establishing an Islamic caliphate. It distinguished itself in April by the brutal kidnapping of more than 250 Nigerian schoolgirls whose fate is still unknown.
How can I speak of a small, relatively inconsequential, group of extremists in Israel in the same breath as these murderous organizations in the Middle East? One reason is that all extremist groups have similar motives. Frequently their members are outsiders who seek recognition or a kind of control they lack in their lives. They use an extremist ideology to pursue power, and often achieve it by playing on the fears of individuals or other groups. With the civil war in Syria, governmental confusion in Iraq, and general chaos throughout the Middle East, young people may feel they can bring order and purpose to their existence by joining groups like ISIS. The more recruits these groups get, the greater power they amass. In Israel, tensions between Arabs and Jews, fears of another outburst of violence and, of course, the threat of Hamas terrorism can draw people — especially those on the far right — to back groups like Lehava.
But there is another, more subtle, aspect common to all forms of extremism that makes them so dangerous and that surfaced more than ever in the past year. That is their ability to arouse people’s latent hatreds or prejudices that had previously been kept under control. I’m thinking of the extent of European anti-Semitism we saw in 2014, much of it triggered by extremist Islamist anti-Zionism or by far-right nationalism. True, criticism of Israel does not necessarily equal anti-Semitism, but rabid attacks against Israel and Zionism spilled over in England and France, Belgium, Sweden and Germany into vicious anti-Jewishness. For decades after World War II, anti-Semitism in Europe was more or less held in check, suppressed by the shame of the Holocaust. Now, spurred on by anti-Zionist vitriol, the age-old European disease has flared up again, the clock seemingly turned back to the darkest era of Jewish history.
Yet for all the extremism of the past year, and for all the radical Islamist bombast against Israel, darkness does not tell the entire story. Israel itself is still a beacon of light within the Middle East maelstrom. Even with extremists in its midst, the Jewish state remains a vibrant democracy. Hundreds of people turned out for a rally against Lehava, and its leader was arrested, along with the three arsonists. “There is absolutely no place for these people in Israeli society,” said former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. She herself has joined with Labor Party head Isaac Herzog in opposing Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming elections. If they win, there is a good chance they will ally themselves with moderate Arab states, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Jordan, to fend off Islamic extremism. But even if they lose and Netanyahu remains in office, the people will have chosen and democracy will have won.
That is the best antidote to extremism.
Francine Klagsbrun’s most recent book, “The Fourth Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day” is now an e-book. She is currently writing a biography of Golda Meir.
Food and Wine
A Love For All Things Lemon
Begin 2015 with a bright burst of citrus.
Amy Spiro - Jewish Week Online Columnist
In the wintertime, things can start to feel a little dull and colorless. Especially when the temperature dips - they're talking about snow in Jerusalem! - it can start to feel oppressive. So little pops of flavor, like in these bright, citrusy lemon cookies, are a welcome touch. I love all things lemon and this tender, chewy cookie is delicious.
It calls for shortening, which I understand some people might not like using, though it does produce a different texture to using butter or margarine. And today the shortening you buy is available trans-fat free. If you still don't want to use it, you can sub in butter or margarine.
Amy Spiro is a journalist and writer based in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of the Jerusalem Culinary Institute's baking and pastry track, a regular writer for The Jerusalem Post and blogs at bakingandmistaking.com. She also holds a BA in Journalism and Politics from NYU.
Travel
Thoughts On The Sharing Economy Hilary Larson - Travel Writer
Lately a day rarely goes by without headlines about Airbnb, Uber and the so-called sharing economy — social-media, app-driven services that, for better or worse, are transforming modern travel.
As I considered the phenomenon from a Jewish perspective, it occurred to me that while Airbnb may be a hot new thing in America, the sharing economy has a century-old history in Israel.
The kibbutz movement was founded just over 100 years ago, promoting a collectivist, agrarian lifestyle that is based on, and dedicated to, shared values. The maximum common good is at the core of the kibbutz, where members pool their time and skills for the benefit not only of each other, but also of the society at large.
That ethical vision feels very different from the radically capitalist ventures driving the digital-age sharing economy. But from my perspective, the ethics of participation in the new sharing economy depend on the economic calculus of the local market. So while that may be complicated, as Jewish travelers, we ought to consider those implications as we navigate these options.
I first tried Airbnb about five years ago in Spain. Oggi and I longed to explore the unspoiled coast north of Barcelona, but the few area hotels were very expensive.
There were plenty of appealing Airbnb lodgings under $100, however. Within days of creating a profile, we scored a lovely, private suite in the core of a tiny medieval village in the countryside, about 15 minutes from the beach. The owners, a young Catalan couple with a friendly dog, had converted the ancient stone building into a bed-and-breakfast; the husband — a chef — even cooked us dinner for our near-midnight Friday arrival.
We have since enjoyed numerous Airbnb stays in villages around Europe. Mostly, they were like that first place — rustic-chic guestrooms in homey bed-and-breakfasts run out of historic, one-of-a-kind old buildings that our hosts called home. They were not only cheaper than hotels; they offered the kind of quintessentially local character that no chain ever could.
In many rural areas like the Catalan coast, Airbnb is an all-around win. Hosts earn much-needed cash in a tough labor market; they can therefore afford to maintain historic properties, and their very presence contributes to the viability of regions where work is scarce and younger people might otherwise leave.
Guests have opportunities to stay in lodgings that are more distinctive, more local in feel and often better value. And hotels — with their prime locations, guest services and comfortingly predictable formality — will still find plenty of customers.
But in big cities with already-high rents and residents struggling to afford decent housing, Airbnb in practice looks decidedly less ethical. Some hosts are making extra cash by opening up their homes. But it’s been well-documented that many landlords are converting resident housing to vacation rentals, since they can earn far more at $200 a night than $1500 a month, which further limits the housing supply and pushes up rents. This is happening not only in New York, but also in Berlin, Paris and many other cities where tourism is booming.
Likewise, when it began in San Francisco, Uber — a service in which riders use a smartphone app to hire their neighbors as freelance taxi drivers — looked like a very ethical response to a terrible situation.
San Franciscans have historically faced poor transit options, a paucity of parking spots, high costs for vehicle ownership, and a taxi shortage. Essentially, it was a tough city to get around until Uber showed up and gave people a way to get around quickly, cheaply and efficiently. And people with marginal incomes suddenly had a way to make money. That’s a common good.
But in places like Barcelona, where licensed taxi drivers are protesting the incursion of Uber-style apps, Uber seems kind of mean and unhelpful to anyone other than Uber. As is the case in cities across Europe, Barcelona public transit is comprehensive and affordable, and taxis are plentiful and cheap. Many drivers were already sitting idle during slow hours; as more unemployed workers turned to driving as a way to earn cash, the union had already considered restrictions on the number of drivers who were permitted to work a given shift.
In such markets, Uber doesn’t give riders any significant advantage, but it does undermine the livelihoods of licensed drivers who are already struggling. That feels more like poaching than sharing.
Here in the U.S., I have yet to stay at an Airbnb property. I’ve searched the listings for several West Coast and South Florida trips, but U.S. listings tend to be expensive, and I’ve always found it cheaper to stay at a motel.
The bottom line: what can be a positive force for social good in one market can be an exploitive, even pernicious, phenomenon in another. As Jews, we would do well to travel in the spirit of our kibbutznik brethren and consider how to participate in the sharing economy as a part of the solution, not part of the problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment